Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In autumn 2016, the Taoiseach said the following in a Dáil debate:

It is a great regret that the previous Government, of which I was a member, did not hold a plebiscite on the issue or allow people in Dublin to have a say on directly electing a mayor for the city.

He was in favour of the concept. In 2013, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, who is now the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, published a statement:

I'm a big supporter of having a directly elected Mayor for Dublin. There's a big democratic deficit at the moment in that the person who runs the city, the City Manager, is unelected and yet has all of the power and responsibility for the capital, whereas the Lord Mayor (elected by the Councillors) is largely a ceremonial role.

Late last year, the Dáil was told it was likely the Government would hold a plebiscite on the mayoral issue next autumn, around the time there might be a presidential election. It was also reported that in a report to Government, the Department had come out in favour of directly-elected mayoral system for Dublin and possibly Cork. I would add Limerick, Waterford and Galway as all our cities should have that sort of leadership.

This is not about an urban-rural divide. We all have rural and urban connections wherever we live in this country. It is not about Dublin versus the rest either. It seems the Government has a cunning plan at the moment whereby it will cripple Dublin with gridlock in an attempt to help the rest of the country develop. A planning proposal which involves being stuck in traffic for 75 minutes to get from Castleknock to Kildare Street every day is not a clever one. Things are worse around the country. Speaking for Dublin, the city is in crisis. Every other city is the same.

We need real leadership with a mandate to tackle the housing crisis. One cannot get that when one has four different city managers who are unelected and answer to no one but the mandarins in Custom House and Merrion Street who run everything in this country. We need mayors to sort out the housing crisis and a transport crisis which is just as bad, if not worse, in Galway as it is in Dublin. We need someone to represent each of our cities and the enterprise culture we have to develop business and the economy in a co-ordinated way rather than according to a divided approach.

We need a mayor who has real power so we can develop the cultural life in our cities, as well as a mayor who can help to lead community development. Dublin Culture Connects is a fantastic example of bottom-up leadership that is happening but it will not work when it is controlled and led just by the Civil Service, rather than by elected officials.

Will the Taoiseach put this to the people? Will we have a plebiscite this autumn in order that we can introduce directly-elected mayors in our cities, starting in 2019? I do not believe he could introduce a plebiscite that would say to the people we are thinking of doing it six years later. Will he put it to the people? Will he live up to what he said numerous times in the Dáil and what the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has also said, namely, they believe, like us, that a directly-elected mayor is needed? If we are going to do it, the Taoiseach must decide now so we can have the plebiscite in time. Is it going to happen?

See this speech in context